Lewes resignalling: Why are no trains being diverted to/from Brighton? [28/11/19]

With the closure of the railway around Lewes, trains from Hastings, Eastbourne and Seaford are not running to London today, tomorrow or the weekend [Thursday 28 to Sunday 1 December 2019].

The signal boxes at Lewes, Newhaven Town and Newhaven Harbour will close and the signalling control of the line move to our state-of-the-art route operating centre at Three Bridges.The project will be replacing old signalling equipment and replacing it with more modern, more reliable technology, which means there will be fewer delays for passengers in this area.

Click to expand...

https://www.southernrailway.com/tra...spx?_id=8E03AF11EF2C47A3B4118719328B32A9&_z=z

Tomorrow [Friday], morning trains that would have run from Hastings, Eastbourne and Seaford are being diverted to run to and from Brighton. However there are no such diversions for these trains today. Does anyone know why? Is it due to the location of the works taking place today? Is there more rolling stock avilable tomorrow?

Examples of trains not running today are the 7:26 and 7:37 services from Haywards Heath to London Bridge and London Victoria respectively. Those along with others are running tomorrow though.

Today, trains are running between Eastbourne and Brighton, tomorrow they are not (I assumed at first you were talking about cancellation/diversions at Lewes). I don't know if that makes a difference to crew and stock provision?

30907 said:

Today, trains are running between Eastbourne and Brighton, tomorrow they are not (I assumed at first you were talking about cancellation/diversions at Lewes). I don't know if that makes a difference to crew and stock provision?

Click to expand...

That is the reason. The trains that would go from Eastbourne to London are going to Brighton and terminating there. Where as tomorrow there are no trains from Eastbourne so they are running them from Brighton to London.

I was reading things in a few different places, including Twitter but I didn't think to check the departure boards for Eastbourne. However they don't seem to be running addition trains from Brighton after the morning peak tomorrow, whereas today there are trains running from Eastbourne to Brighton after the morning peak.

infobleep said:

That is the reason. The trains that would go from Eastbourne to London are going to Brighton and terminating there. Where as tomorrow there are no trains from Eastbourne so they are running them from Brighton to London.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, there will be trains from Eastbourne tomorrow. Services from Hastings/Ore will run as far as Polegate, with bus replacements operating to Lewes, Brighton and Haywards Heath from there. The last time they attempted to close Lewes signal box (March this year), buses were also running to East Grinstead, so I'm not sure why they're not doing that this time as that was rather handy.

In addition to this, there will be a shuttle train service running between Brighton and Falmer.

RichardKing said:

Just to clarify, there will be trains from Eastbourne tomorrow. Services from Hastings/Ore will run as far as Polegate, with bus replacements operating to Lewes, Brighton and Haywards Heath from there. The last time they attempted to close Lewes signal box (March this year), buses were also running to East Grinstead, so I'm not sure why they're not doing that this time as that was rather handy.

In addition to this, there will be a shuttle train service running between Brighton and Falmer.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. So I take it they will need less rolling stock to run Eastbourne to Polegate and Brighton to Falmer, than today. Hence the ability to run trains from Brighton tomorrow.

infobleep said:

Thanks for the clarification. So I take it they will need less rolling stock to run Eastbourne to Polegate and Brighton to Falmer, than today. Hence the ability to run trains from Brighton tomorrow.

Click to expand...

It depends on the number of coaches diagrammed to these services. In March, the services starting from/terminating at Polegate were all 8 cars, with the Brighton-Falmer-Brighton shuttles all 4 cars. Additionally, there will need to be sufficient coaches down at Eastbourne ready for start of service on Monday.